1. Field
In one aspect, the disclosure generally relates to computation architectures that perform multi-threaded processing and may consume shared data, other aspects relate to include task-specific circuitry for graphics processing and in one more particular aspect, task-specific structures for operations performed during ray tracing, still further aspects relate to caching behavior in processor systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) provide relatively large-scale parallel processing for graphics operations. Some GPUs may use one or more Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) computation units that are generally programmable. Such GPUs may obtain higher performance largely by using more transistors to replicate computation units, and by providing larger memories and more bandwidth to such memories. This approach theoretically allows a large part of the transistor and routing budget for a GPU to be used for general purpose computation. Some GPUs use different processing units for different portions of a graphics pipeline, such as having separate geometry processors and pixel shading engines. GPUs may provide a memory subsystem that allows memory accesses by instructions being executed on any of these units. A GPU may share a main system memory with other system components (e.g., a CPU); a GPU also may have internal caches.